OTTAWA—The Harper government had a host of military and possibly commercial reasons for not blaming and shaming Russia in the aftermath of an embarrassing spy scandal involving a junior intelligence officer, a series of internal briefings suggest.

The case of Sub-Lt. Jeffery Delisle, which exploded across the front pages in January, has largely disappeared into a black hole of secrecy and court-ordered silence that even a Wall Street Journal story failed to dislodge last spring.

The New York-based publication recently quoted U.S. intelligence sources saying Delisle’s breach in communications secrets was roughly as big in volume as the notorious U.S. data loss to WikiLeaks.

Yet, the Harper government has remained mute, even in the face of suggestions the case caused a major rift with Washington.

Several sources within the government and the military say there was a vigorous debate within the halls of power about whether to call out the former Cold War adversary over Delisle, whose case has been adjourned until June 13 while his lawyer awaits security-washed documents.

A small cadre of cabinet ministers, notably Defence Minister Peter MacKay, argued for a measured, nuanced response to the crisis, which continues to have the potential to cause serious strains among allies, said the sources.

The Conservatives have previously shown no hesitation to paint Moscow as a bogey man, especially when it comes to justifying their military build-up in the Arctic.

But to alienate Russia over the alleged betrayal by a navy sub-lieutenant, potentially setting off tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions, had more downsides than upsides, sources and briefing documents suggest.

The rivalry over Arctic boundaries, which is expected to come to a head next year with a United Nations submission, is being driven by the suggestion of mineral wealth under the melting polar sea.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and National Defence have repeatedly pointed out, in internal briefing reports, that Russian interest in the Arctic is weighted towards oil and gas exploration — something that Canada can appreciate and possibly exploit.

“Indeed, these commonalities could yield political and commercial opportunities for co-operation between Moscow and Ottawa,” said a July 12, 2011 briefing note prepared for MacKay.

“From a defence perspective, in spite of disagreements over Russian (Long Range Aviation) flights, there is mutual interest with regard to co-operation in (search-and-rescue) and Arctic domain awareness. Defence is continuing to explore the potential for further co-operation with Russia in these fields.”

The note was written as security services investigated Delisle’s alleged treachery.

Among the more sensitive areas of mutual co-operation is an international counter-terrorism exercise known as Vigilant Eagle.

The manoeuvres, which began in 2008, see NORAD and the Russian air force practise how to handle a hijacked airliner in international airspace. Tension over Russia’s intervention in Georgia cancelled the 2009 event, but at the time of Delisle’s arrest plans were already well advanced for Canada’s participation in the 2012 edition.

Russian co-operation in the Arctic and elsewhere was paramount to Canada’s interests, as well as Moscow’s ability to influence events in potential global flashpoints such as Iran and North Korea, MacKay reportedly argued with his colleagues.

The government’s initial reaction was to go public with the allegations, but sources said cooler heads pointed out that such a reaction would complicate relations with the erstwhile ally, which has been engaged in increasingly aggressive spy operations.

Defence and intelligence experts have said there is growing exasperation with Russia.

“As you know, about a year ago, a British minister complained publicly about Russian espionage, the scale of it and the intensity of it and the aggressiveness,” said Wesley Wark, an expert at the University of Ottawa. “He asked the question: What are you doing? And warned them to scale it back because you’re causing us problems in terms of us pursuing other legitimate targets.”

…

Published on Monday May 21, 2012
Murray Brewster
The Canadian Press

Find this story at 21 May 2012

© Copyright Toronto Star 1996-2012

Canadian government officials have refused to confirm or deny media reports that Ottawa expelled several Russian diplomats recently in connection with an alleged espionage affair. The alleged expulsions are reportedly connected with the case of Royal Canadian Navy Sub-Lieutenant Jeffrey Paul Delisle. Earlier this week, Delisle became the first person to be charged under Canada’s post-9/11 Security of Information Act, for allegedly passing protected government information to an unspecified foreign body. According to media reports, Delisle, who had top-level security clearance, worked at Canada’s ultra-secure TRINITY communications center in Halifax. Canadian authorities have refused to reveal the country for which Delisle allegedly spied. But late last night, CTV revealed that the names of two Russian diplomats and two technicians stationed at the embassy of the Russian Federation in Ottawa had been quietly dropped from the list of recognized diplomatic officials in Canada. The list, which is approved periodically by the Canadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, contains the names of all foreign diplomats legally permitted to operate in Canada. One of the missing names, that of Lieutenant Colonel Dmitry V. Fedorchatenko, bears the title of the embassy’s Assistant Defense Attaché. Russian consular officials in Canada rejected speculation that the missing diplomats were expelled by the Canadian government in connection with the Delisle affair. It appears that Canadian counterintelligence investigators had been monitoring Jeff Delisle for quite some time, perhaps even before 2010. If Delisle acted —as he is reported to have done— as an unregistered foreign agent of Russia, it is certainly not surprising that he was a naval officer. He was probably selected by the Russians because he was a member of the Royal Canadian Navy. Ever since Canada joined NATO, in the late 1940s, its tactical contribution to the Organization has been mostly naval. Along with Norway and Iceland, Canada has acted as NATO’s ‘eyes and ears’ in the north Atlantic Ocean. Since the end of the Cold War, Canada has been particularly critical when it comes to the maneuvers of Russian submarines —whether conventional or nuclear— in the northern seas. Delisle’s precise intelligence duties are not clear at this moment, and may never be publicly revealed; but if he had any access at all to ACOUSTINT (Acoustical Intelligence) data on Russian vessels, or other maritime intelligence collected by Canadian naval forces, he would have been especially useful to the GRU (Russian military intelligence). Meanwhile, Washington has remained silent on the subject.

…

January 20, 2012 by Joseph Fitsanakis Leave a comment

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |

Find this story at 20 January 2012

Robert Baer is a former CIA case officer and the author of several books on the Middle East.

In the new James Bond thriller, “Skyfall,” the villain is a cyberterrorist named Raoul Silva, a disgruntled former British agent who’s trying to crash the digital universe. It’s a nice touch, creating a very real, very terrifying scenario that “could paralyze the nation,” as Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned just last month.

And that is about the only aspect of the movie that is likely to be accurate.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m a fan of the Bond movies. I go to see them for the same reasons everyone else does: the gorgeous women, the most beautiful places on Earth and, of course, the roller-coaster ride of a plot. I delight in Bond’s complete defiance of gravity. His suits never wrinkle, his Aston Martin is never in the garage for repairs, the girls never say no.

But as a former spy, what I like most about the Bond movies is the way good always triumphs over evil. His cases end neatly, with the villain dispatched and the world safe for the good guys.

Real-life espionage is a lot less sexy — and a lot messier.

Sometimes, age-old wisdom notwithstanding, the enemy of our enemy turns out not to be our friend. Once, in the mid-1980s, I was handed the portfolio for Libya’s opposition leaders, many of whom were operating out of Khartoum, Sudan. At first, I had only a hazy idea of who Moammar Gaddafi’s opponents were. All I knew for sure was that the Reagan administration wanted Gaddafi to go.

Late one night, I woke up to the sound of the butts of assault rifles pounding my door. Two of my Libyan contacts were on the run from Gaddafi’s assassins and expected me to protect them. We talked most of the night — about Libya, history and Allah. By the time they could safely leave, I had come to understand that the people we’d picked to replace Gaddafi were militant Salafists determined to turn Libya into an Islamic republic. They didn’t succeed then, but you could argue that the people who attacked our diplomatic outpost in Benghazi in September were their linear descendents.

While occasionally I found myself in a Bond-like setting during my spying career, the story inevitably unfolded with a lot less panache.

One time, in pursuit of an elusive informant, the agency sent me to Monaco to troll the Casino de Monte-Carlo. The problems started before I even got on the plane. The CIA scoffed at the idea of buying me a tuxedo, and the dragon lady who did our accounting refused to give me a cent to put on the roulette table. Not surprisingly, as soon as I walked into the casino in my penny loafers, the security goons spotted me as an impostor and pulled me over for a polite interrogation. I never found our would-be informant, but I did come away with the certainty that I wasn’t James Bond.

Anyone who’s passed through Langley will tell you that a spy’s life is one of tedious endurance. It’s long hours of cubicle living, going through the same files everyone else in the office has gone through, hoping to catch a missed lead. Or it’s waiting by the phone hoping that the third secretary from the Ecuadorian Embassy will call you back. Or keeping your fingers crossed that your next three-year assignment isn’t in Chad. As CIA-operative-turned-novelist Charles McCarry said, spying is nothing more than an organized hunt for a windfall.That translates to waiting for that one “walk-in” who comes knocking on the agency’s door ready to hand over the crown jewels.

That’s not to say that, now and then, Bond moments don’t come along. The CIA operatives who located Osama bin Laden and self-proclaimed Sept. 11, 2001, mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed can tell you all about them. And tragedies such as the recent attack in Benghazi are few and far between.

Still, usually the bad guys are humdrum, hiding in some impenetrable slum or village hanging on the side of a mountain. They’re the kind of places James Bond would only drop in on for a quick shootout. In fact, most spooks will never hear a shot fired in anger.

The real MI6 — Her Majesty’s Secret Service — isn’t all that different. British agents, too, spend their time sitting in offices rather than jumping out of airplanes or off speeding trains. And like CIA operatives, they’d all make better anthropologists than marksmen.

Much of a spy’s work these days is wading through data and breaking into computers. No doubt the geeks who threw the Stuxnet monkey wrench into the Iranian nuclear works didn’t move far from their computer screens for months. The most dangerous part of the day was probably going for Chinese takeout.

Another recent Hollywood release evokes this ethos much better than any Bond movie. “Argo,” the tale of the CIA’s rescue of six Americans during the Iran hostage crisis, is grittier and grimmer and captures the air of monotonous procedure punctuated by moments of sheer terror.

Yes, parts of the movie are over-the-top dramatized or pared down to the unrecognizable. But could there be a better casting than Bryan Cranston as a rumpled CIA boss in a shabby suit and cheap haircut, a fiercely pragmatic and good guy?

I managed to end up on the periphery of the hostage crisis and spent a couple of days at the American Embassy in Tehran only months before the takeover. As I watched the opening sequences of “Argo,” I did a double-take; the embassy interiors were exactly as I remembered them. So were the two rescued Americans I knew, Kathy and Joe Stafford.

…

By Robert Baer, Published: November 9

Find this story at 9 November 2012

© The Washington Post Company

More than a year after French carmaker Renault found itself embroiled in an industrial espionage scandal, new documents show that the company had prepared statements in the event that the three employees blamed in the case committed suicide.

More than one year ago, French carmaker Renault found itself embroiled in a high-profile industrial espionage scandal. Three executives were fired, but the case turned out to be bogus, and in a desperate attempt to put the whole sordid affair behind them, the company issued a public apology to its former employees.

It appears, however, that the story is far from over. New documents have emerged showing that Renault had prepared statements in the event that the scandal drove the three employees concerned to kill themselves.

Executives Michel Balthazard, Bertrand Rochette and Mathieu Tenenbaum were dismissed from Renault in January of last year on suspicions that they had leaked information on the company’s electric cars to rivals. Although wrongly accused, the three found themselves at the heart of a very public scandal, with little recourse to defend themselves.Renault espionage scandal

AUTO INDUSTRY
Renault loses No. 2 man over industrial spying scandal

AUTO INDUSTRY
Renault apologises over spying claim

France
Renault braces for backlash in industrial spying case

Apparently aware of the possible consequences, Renault’s communications director took action. Two statements were prepared in the event of the “inevitable” – one for a botched suicide attempt, the other for a successful one.

Strain on executives

The documents, which French radio station France Info published on their website Friday, showed that Renault was not only fully aware that the strain of the situation might drive its employees to suicide, but also its apparent acceptance of what it saw as a certainty.

Written in dry, clinical terms, the two statements varied little in their content. The first, which was to be issued in the event of “option 1”, in other words a failed suicide attempt, read: “One of the three executives laid off on January 3, 2011, attempted to end his life on (date).”

The second, or “option 2”, was only slightly modified: “One of the three executives laid off on January 3, 2011, ended his life on (date).”

The statement then went on to convey the company’s regret over the tragic incident.

…

Latest update: 13/10/2012
By Luke BROWN (video)
FRANCE 24 (text)

Find this Story at 13 October 2012

© 2006 – 2012 Copyright FRANCE 24. All rights reserved – FRANCE 24 is not responsible for the content of external websites.

Kim Dotcom hat vor Gericht einen Sieg erstritten: Der Mitgründer des umstrittenen und stillgelegten Datenspeicherdienstes Megaupload darf die Geheimdienste in Neuseeland verklagen.

Der Gründer der Internetplattform Megaupload, Kim Dotcom, darf die neuseeländischen Aufklärungsdienste verklagen. Das entschied eine Richterin am Donnerstag in Neuseeland.

Dotcoms Anwalt Paul Davison sagte Reportern anschließend, der gebürtige Kieler wolle wegen illegaler Abhöraktionen Schadensersatz einklagen. “Das dürfte uns teuer zu stehen kommen”, sagte Oppositionspolitiker Winston Peters. “Es geht womöglich um mehrere hundert Millionen Dollar.”

…

6. Dezember 2012, 12:49 Uhr

Find this story at 6 December 2012

© 2012 stern.de GmbH

Kim Dotcom wins right to sue New Zealand’s spy agency for unlawful spying.

Kim Dotcom maintains that Megaupload should not be held responsible for stored content [Reuters]

Kim Dotcom, internet tycoon and Megaupload founder, has won the right to sue New Zealand’s foreign intelligence agency for unlawful spying by a US led probe on online piracy which led to his arrest earlier this year.

Helen Winkelmann, High Court chief judge, on Thursday ordered New Zealand’s Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) to disclose all details of any information-sharing arrangements it had with foreign agencies, including the US authorities.

“I have no doubt that the most convenient and expeditious way of enabling the court to determine all matters in dispute is to join the GCSB in the proceedings,” she stated in a written judgement.

Dotcom, who changed his name from Kim Schultz, is fighting a US attempt to extradite him from New Zealand in what has been described as the world’s largest copyright case.

His US-based lawyer, Ira Rothken hailed the court decision as a major victory.

Armed police raided Dotcom’s mansion in January at the behest of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, leading to a court ruling that the search warrants used were illegal, opening the way for him to seek damages from New Zealand Authorities.

Dotcom was released on bail and New Zealand’s Prime Minister, John Key issued an apology after it was revealed in September that the GCSB had spied on Dotcom before police raided his Auckland mansion.

Dotcom is a German national with residency in New Zealand, making it illegal for the GCSB to spy on him.

…

Last Modified: 06 Dec 2012 10:37

Find this story at 6 December 2012

Tim Weiner, a former New York Times reporter, is the author of “Legacy of Ashes: the History of the C.I.A.,” and “Enemies: a History of the F.B.I.”

The structure of the Central Intelligence Agency has remained essentially unchanged since the agency was created in 1947 to fight the cold war against the Soviet Union and its satellites. A 21st-century C.I.A. must be renovated to reflect present-day realities.
Generals should control paramilitaries. Analysts should be in the field, reporting to diplomats. An elite core should remain.

Before 9/11 the C.I.A.’s clandestine service never assassinated anybody itself (though at times it tried, as in the case of Fidel Castro). Since then drone airstrikes against suspected foreign terrorists have killed some 2,500 people, including civilians, without public discussion in Congress. Intelligence is the hard work of trying to know your enemy. It is not the dirty business of political murder. That is warfare, and war belongs to the Pentagon. The clandestine service’s paramilitary officers should work directly for the Department of Defense, deployed overseas, controlled by four-star combatant commanders and governed under military law. The president should acknowledge that they are a lethal weapon devoted to counterterrorism.

C.I.A. analysts should leave their desks in Virginia and move overseas. They need to get out of the prediction business, a losing proposition. They should work for the State Department’s highly regarded intelligence and research bureau, and they should serve in the nations they analyze. Then they will have a chance to see developing political pictures, to assay ground truths for themselves. That requires more C.I.A. officers with African, Arabic and Chinese languages, skills and backgrounds, reporting on conflicts requiring American intelligence more than American firepower.

…

Updated December 4, 2012, 4:51 PM

Find this story at 4 December 2012

© 2011 The New York Times Co.

AMSTERDAM – Skype heeft illegaal persoonsgegevens verstrekt aan een bedrijf tijdens het onderzoek naar massale cyberaanvallen op PayPal. Het betalingsbedrijf werd aangevallen in reactie op blokkades van donaties aan Wikileaks.
Foto: AFP

Skype verstrekte persoonsgegevens van een 16-jarige jongen aan een bedrijf dat ermee naar de politie stapte.

Dat blijkt uit het dossier van het strafrechtelijk onderzoek naar de aanvallen op diverse financiële instellingen in 2010. NU.nl heeft dat dossier ingezien.

Het onderzoek met de codenaam Talang richtte zich op twee personen. Zij zouden een rol hebben gespeeld in de dagenlange aanvallen op de websites van Mastercard, VISA en PayPal. De aanval werd uitgevoerd onder de vlag van Anonymous en stond bekend als Operation Payback.

Paypal

Om de aanvallen te onderzoeken schakelde PayPal Joep Gommers in. Hij is senior director global research van beveiligingsbedrijf iSIGHT Partners, en ontdekte via een chatkanaal dat er ook Nederlanders bij de zaak betrokken waren. Op basis van een pseudoniem kwam een 16-jarige jongen in beeld.

Daarop nam Gommers contact op met Skype, een andere klant van zijn bedrijf. Skype was niet betrokken bij de zaak, maar hij wilde de inloggegevens en persoonsgegevens van de verdachte krijgen.

In een e-mail aan de politie, de OPTA en Govcert, dat inmiddels is opgegaan in het National Cyber Security Center, schrijft hij: “Hey, Ik heb spoedig inloginformatie, maar nu nog niet.”

Politiedossier

In het politiedossier staat dat Skype gegevens heeft verstrekt, zoals de gebruikersnaam, naam van de persoon, gebruikte e-mailadressen en het huisadres dat bij betaling is gebruikt. Dat adres bleek vervolgens overeen te komen met de gemeentelijke basisadministratie. Zo kwam de verdachte in beeld.

De informatie is vrijwillig verstrekt en niet gevorderd, zoals gewoonlijk gebruikelijk is.

Gommers stelt tegenover NU.nl dat zijn bedrijf niet in opdracht van opsporingsinstanties werkt, maar slechts in opdracht van klanten. Ook benadrukt hij kennis in producten en rapporten te stoppen en doorgaans niet bewijs te leveren.

Toch komt het wel voor dat kennis ‘wordt gedeeld met opsporingsinstanties als publieke dienstverlening’. De leeftijd van een verdachte valt volgens hem moeilijk vast te stellen, omdat hackers online bijna altijd anoniem zijn.

Vordering

De gang van zaken tijdens het onderzoek verbaast Gerrit-Jan Zwenne, hoogleraar recht en informatiesamenleving in Leiden en advocaat bij Bird & Bird te Den Haag.

“Opmerkelijk. Je zou verwachten dat abonnee-gegevens niet zomaar worden prijsgegeven. De gegevens moeten worden verstrekt als de politie een geldige vordering heeft, of als de rechter het opdraagt. Anders niet”, vertelt hij aan NU.nl.

“Je kan je afvragen of de telecom en privacywetgeving toestaan dat abonneegegevens worden verstrekt zonder vordering of rechterlijk bevel. Je kan kan je ook afvragen of politie die gegevens wel mag gebruiken als ze op deze wijze zijn verkregen. Had de politie die gegevens niet gewoon moeten vorderen, met alle waarborgen die daarbij horen?”

…

Door: NU.nl/Brenno de Winter

Find this story at 4 November 2012

Copyright © 1998-2012 NU.nl is onderdeel van het netwerk van Sanoma Media Netherlands groep

Skype faces accusations that it handed user data to a private company without a warrant

Skype’s privacy credentials took a hit in July over a refusal to comment on whether it could eavesdrop on conversations. Now the Internet chat service is facing another privacy-related backlash—after allegedly handing over user data without a warrant to a private security firm investigating pro-WikiLeaks activists.

The explosive details were contained in a report by Dutch investigative journalist Brenno de Winter, published on NU.nl earlier this week. Citing an internal police file detailing an investigation called “Operation Talang,” Winter wrote that PayPal was attempting to track down activists affiliated with the hacker collective Anonymous. The hackers had attacked the PayPal website following the company’s controversial decision to block payments to WikiLeaks in December 2010.

As part of that investigation, PayPal apparently hired the private security company iSight to help find those responsible. Headquartered in Texas and with a European base in Amsterdam, iSight describes itself as a “global cyber intelligence firm” that “supports leading federal and commercial entities with targeted and unique insights necessary to manage cyber risks.” iSight’s Netherlands-based director of global research, Joep Gommers, followed an online trail in an effort to track down the hackers, ultimately leading to a number of Dutch citizens, among them a 16-year-old boy operating under a pseudonym. Gommers reportedly contacted Skype, also a client of iSight, and requested account data about the teenager. According to Winter’s report, “the police file notes that Skype handed over the suspect’s personal information, such as his user name, real name, e-mail addresses and the home address used for payment.” It adds that Skype disclosed the information voluntarily, “without a court order, as would usually be required.”

…

By Ryan Gallagher

Find this story at 9 November 2012

All contents © 2012 The Slate Group, LLC. All rights reserved.

Say goodbye to online service providers protecting the identities of their users. With just a bit of begging, a Texas-based intelligence firm succeeded in convincing Skype to send over sensitive account data pertaining to a teenage WikiLeaks fan.

Reports out of Amsterdam this week suggest that Microsoft-owned Skype didn’t wait for a court order or warrant with a judge’s signature before it handed over the personal info of a 16-year-old Dutch boy. The youngster was suspected of being involved in Operation Payback, an Anonymous-endorsed initiative that targeted the servers of PayPal, Visa, Mastercard and others after those companies blocked WikiLeaks from receiving online payment backs in December 2010. When hacktivists responded to the blockade by overflowing the servers of those sites with distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, PayPal asked Dallas, Texas’ iSIGHT Partners Inc., a self-described“global cyber intelligence firm,” to investigate.

It appears that iSIGHT didn’t have deals with just PayPal either. Skype is also a client of the online private eye, and they reached out to the chat company for assistance. Normally the court would enter the equation here and write out a warrant to try and track down that information, but the initial report by Brenno de Winter of Nu.nl reveals that investigators skipped that step.

According to English-language transcription of Winter’s account, “the police file notes that Skype handed over the suspect’s personal information, such as his user name, real name, e-mail addresses and the home address used for payment.” While that in it of itself isn’t all that unusual, Winter writes that Skype sent over that information voluntarily, “without a court order, as would usually be required.”

Joep Gommers, the senior director of global research from iSIGHT, defended the action to Winter, admitting, “On occasion, we share our research findings with relevant law enforcement parties as a public service, just as you would report what appeared to be a crime that you witnessed in your neighborhood.”

In emails obtained by Winter, Gommers bragged of his findings to Dutch authorities, writing after he first received assistance from Skype, “Hey, I will have login information soon – but not yet.”

Skype doesn’t stand by the move, though, and says any virtual handshake between one of their staffers and iSIGHT doesn’t fit with the company’s practices when it terms to protecting private user info.

“It is our policy not to provide customer data unless we are served with valid request from legal authorities, or when legally required to do so, or in the event of a threat to physical safety,” Skype said in a statement to Nu.nl. Commenting to Slate, a representative for the chat service noted that it has worked with iSIGHT in the past to “combat spam and malware,” but acknowledged “it appears that some information may have been inappropriately passed on to Dutch authorities without our knowledge.”

Now Skype says they are conducting an internal investigation to see why their privacy policies were ignored and the teenager’s info was sent to iSIGHT, but it might be too late for the company. Other hacktivists that already had a bone to pick with PayPal and other targets of Operation Payback now have their sights set on Gommers and the intelligence company.

In a post published to the AnonNews.org website, one user asks other hacktivists to help find out more about iSIGHT and what damage they may have already done as an intelligence firm willing to bend the rules for helping their high-profile customers.

“It has recently come to our attention that a security company known as isightpartners has been providing sensitive user information obtained from their customers to governments around the world to target activists linked to Anonymous,” one user writes. “We seek your assistance and demand answers to this activity. Who are isightpartners other customers they are using to target Anons? How long has isightpartners targeted Anonymous? These are questions we must answer. isightparters declared war on Anonymous so we must declare war on them.”

Meanwhile, others are unsure of what good the data will do for iSIGHT or PayPal since it could have been obtained illegally.

“You would imagine that subscriber data aren’t simply handed over. They have to be provided when the police has a valid demand or court order, but not in any other case,” Gerrit-Jan Zwenne, a professor of Law and Information Society in Leiden and a lawyer at Bird & Bird in The Hague, tells Winter. “You can also wonder whether police can use that information if it was acquired this way.”

…

Published: 12 November, 2012, 21:14
Edited: 12 November, 2012, 21:14

Find this story at 12 November 2012

© Autonomous Nonprofit Organization “TV-Novosti”, 2005 – 2011. All rights reserved.

Boys were targeted at close range witnesses claim, as defence secretary asked to launch urgent inquiry

Defence secretary Philip Hammond has been asked to launch an inquiry. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

The defence secretary, Philip Hammond, has been asked to launch an urgent inquiry into claims that British forces led a counter-insurgency operation in Afghanistan during which a 12-year-old boy and three teenagers were shot dead while they were drinking tea.

Lawyers acting for the brother of two of the victims have written to Hammond describing an incident on 18 October in the village of Loi Bagh in Nad Ali, Helmand province, where British forces have been based since 2006.

According to statements given to the lawyers by other family members and witnesses, the operation involved Afghan and UK forces, but it was British soldiers – possibly special forces – who were said to have been in the lead.

“We submit that all of the victims were under the control and authority of the UK at the times of the deaths and ill-treatment,” states the letter to Hammond.

“The four boys killed all appear to have been deliberately targeted at close range by British forces. All were killed in a residential area over which UK forces clearly had the requisite degree of control and authority.”

The four victims are named as Fazel Mohammed, 18, Naik Mohammed, 16, Mohammed Tayeb, 14 and Ahmed Shah, 12.

Britain contributes soldiers to Nato’s International Security and Assistance Force (Isaf), which has already confirmed that an operation took place in the village on that date.

The incident has been reported in the Afghan media. Major Adam Wojack, a spokesman for Nato-led forces in Afghanistan, confirmed the “joint Afghan-coalition forces” operation in Nad Ali on 18 October. He said the result was the “killing of four Taliban enemies in action”. That claim is rejected by relatives of the victims.

Military sources also said it was unusual for UK forces to take the lead in operations of this kind because the Afghans are supposed to be in control as part of the transition process. The MoD said it would give the claims “full consideration before responding”.

According to a statement sent to Hammond on Tuesday by Tessa Gregory, lawyer for Noor Mohammad Noorzai, brother of two of the dead youths, the boys were “shot and killed at close range” in a family guesthouse. Gregory, of the law firm Public Interest Lawyers, obtained written sworn statements from witnesses in a visit to Afghanistan last month. They allege that British soldiers, who were engaged in a joint operation with Afghan forces, hooded some of those arrested despite a ban on the practice.

“The soldiers walked through the village calling at various houses asking to be told where the claimant’s brother Fazel Mohammed lived”, says Gregory’s statement. “It is alleged that the soldiers entered the house of a neighbour dragged him from his bed, hooded him and his son and beat them until under questioning they showed the soldiers the house of Fazel which was across the street.”

According to the document sent to Hammond, the families and neighbours “reject outright any suggestion that any of the four teenagers killed were in any way connected to the insurgency. All four were innocent teenagers who posed no threat whatsoever to Afghan or British forces”.

Gregory told the Guardian: “On 18 October 2012, during a joint British-Afghan security operation, four innocent Afghan teenagers were shot whilst drinking tea in their family’s mud home in Helmand province. Our client, the elder brother of two of the teenage victims, wants to know why this happened. As far as we are aware no investigation into these tragic deaths has taken place. We hope that in light of our urgent representations the Ministry of Defence will act swiftly to ensure that an effective and independent investigation is carried out without any further delay.”

In her statement to Hammond, Gregory says: “After the soldiers left, the claimant’s family and some neighbours entered the “guesthouse” where they found the bodies of the four teenagers lying in a line with their heads towards the doorway”.

The statement adds: “It was clear that the bodies had been dragged into that position and all had been shot in the head and neck region as they sat on the floor of the guesthouse leaning against the wall drinking tea..”

Gregory says the British soldiers involved in the operation are bound by the European Convention of Human Rights which enshrines the right to life and outlaws inhumane treatment. Unless the MoD could show it has carried out a full investigation, lawyers representing the victims’ families will ask the high court to order one.

…

Richard Norton-Taylor and Nick Hopkins
The Guardian, Tuesday 4 December 2012 20.42 GMT

Find this story at 4 December 2012

© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Campaign seeks to accelerate work on case of 15-year-old Kevin Williams while his terminally ill mother is still alive

Anne Williams in 2009. She campaigned relentlessly against the original Hillsborough inquest. Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian

More than 88,000 people have signed an online petition calling for a new inquest to be brought forward for Kevin Williams, a 15-year-old victim of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, whose mother, Anne, has been diagnosed with terminal cancer.

The attorney general, Dominic Grieve, is preparing a high court application to quash the original Hillsborough inquest verdict, after the report of the Hillsborough Independent Panel in September discredited its principal findings.

The petition seeks to enable Anne Williams, who has campaigned relentlessly against the inquest since its jury reached a verdict of accidental death 21 years ago, to see it quashed in her lifetime.

Elkan Abrahamson, Williams’s solicitor, said he believed it should be possible for Grieve to complete his application by the end of November and for the high court to hold the hearing before Christmas.

However, Grieve’s office, which has said he will make the application “as soon as he possibly can”, hopes only to have a draft completed by the end of this month. When the online petition reaches 100,000 signatures, the issue will have to be considered for a debate in parliament.

“It is fate,” said Williams, who has now moved to a hospice in Southport, Merseyside. “I have known all along what the inquest said about Kevin was wrong, that witnesses were pressured to change their evidence. I couldn’t let go, for my son. I do want to see the inquest quashed.”

Williams said she has not asked her doctors how long she has to live: “I am taking each day as it comes.”

She always contested the account given at the inquest that Kevin died from traumatic asphyxia and so could be considered irrecoverable by 3.15pm on the day of the disaster. That was the time limit for inquest evidence set by coroner Dr Stefan Popper, thereby excluding the emergency response from being considered. Williams was part of an application for a judicial review by six families in 1993 which saw the inquest upheld; she made three applications to the attorney general for the inquest to be quashed, which were refused; and her 2006 application to the European court of human rights failed because she was out of time.

In September, the report by the panel, chaired by James Jones, the bishop of Liverpool, vindicated the campaign by Williams and the other Hillsborough families who protested that the inquest did not reach the truth or justice about the disaster. The panel found 41 of the 96 people who died might have been saved after 3.15pm had the medical response been competent.

…

David Conn
The Guardian, Sunday 18 November 2012 16.50 GMT

Find this story at 18 November 2012

© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

The Pentagon will send hundreds of additional spies overseas as part of an ambitious plan to assemble an espionage network that rivals the CIA in size, U.S. officials said.

The project is aimed at transforming the Defense Intelligence Agency, which has been dominated for the past decade by the demands of two wars, into a spy service focused on emerging threats and more closely aligned with the CIA and elite military commando units.

When the expansion is complete, the DIA is expected to have as many as 1,600 “collectors” in positions around the world, an unprecedented total for an agency whose presence abroad numbered in the triple digits in recent years.

The total includes military attachés and others who do not work undercover. But U.S. officials said the growth will be driven over a five-year period by the deployment of a new generation of clandestine operatives. They will be trained by the CIA and often work with the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command, but they will get their spying assignments from the Department of Defense.

Among the Pentagon’s top intelligence priorities, officials said, are Islamist militant groups in Africa, weapons transfers by North Korea and Iran, and military modernization underway in China.

“This is not a marginal adjustment for DIA,” the agency’s director, Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, said at a recent conference, during which he outlined the changes but did not describe them in detail. “This is a major adjustment for national security.”

The sharp increase in DIA undercover operatives is part of a far-reaching trend: a convergence of the military and intelligence agencies that has blurred their once-distinct missions, capabilities and even their leadership ranks.

Through its drone program, the CIA now accounts for a majority of lethal U.S. operations outside the Afghan war zone. At the same time, the Pentagon’s plan to create what it calls the Defense Clandestine Service, or DCS, reflects the military’s latest and largest foray into secret intelligence work.

The DIA overhaul — combined with the growth of the CIA since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks — will create a spy network of unprecedented size. The plan reflects the Obama administration’s affinity for espionage and covert action over conventional force. It also fits in with the administration’s efforts to codify its counterterrorism policies for a sustained conflict and assemble the pieces abroad necessary to carry it out.

Unlike the CIA, the Pentagon’s spy agency is not authorized to conduct covert operations that go beyond intelligence gathering, such as drone strikes, political sabotage or arming militants.

But the DIA has long played a major role in assessing and identifying targets for the U.S. military, which in recent years has assembled a constellation of drone bases stretching from Afghanistan to East Africa.

The expansion of the agency’s clandestine role is likely to heighten concerns that it will be accompanied by an escalation in lethal strikes and other operations outside public view. Because of differences in legal authorities, the military isn’t subject to the same congressional notification requirements as the CIA, leading to potential oversight gaps.

U.S. officials said that the DIA’s realignment won’t hamper congressional scrutiny. “We have to keep congressional staffs and members in the loop,” Flynn said in October, adding that he believes the changes will help the United States anticipate threats and avoid being drawn more directly into what he predicted will be an “era of persistent conflict.”

U.S. officials said the changes for the DIA were enabled by a rare syncing of personalities and interests among top officials at the Pentagon and CIA, many of whom switched from one organization to the other to take their current jobs.

“The stars have been aligning on this for a while,” said a former senior U.S. military official involved in planning the DIA transformation. Like most others interviewed for this article, the former official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the classified nature of the program.

The DIA project has been spearheaded by Michael G. Vickers, the top intelligence official at the Pentagon and a veteran of the CIA.

Agreements on coordination were approved by Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, a former CIA director, and retired Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, who resigned abruptly as CIA chief last month over an extramarital affair.

The Pentagon announced the DCS plan in April but details have been kept secret. Former senior Defense Department officials said that the DIA now has about 500 “case officers,” the term for clandestine Pentagon and CIA operatives, and that the number is expected to reach between 800 and 1,000 by 2018.

Pentagon and DIA officials declined to discuss specifics. A senior U.S. defense official said the changes will affect thousands of DIA employees, as analysts, logistics specialists and others are reassigned to support additional spies.

The plan still faces some hurdles, including the challenge of creating “cover” arrangements for hundreds of additional spies. U.S. embassies typically have a set number of slots for intelligence operatives posing as diplomats, most of which are taken by the CIA.

The project has also encountered opposition from policymakers on Capitol Hill, who see the terms of the new arrangement as overly generous to the CIA.

The DIA operatives “for the most part are going to be working for CIA station chiefs,” needing their approval to enter a particular country and clearance on which informants they intend to recruit, said a senior congressional official briefed on the plan. “If CIA needs more people working for them, they should be footing the bill.”

Pentagon officials said that sending more DIA operatives overseas will shore up intelligence on subjects that the CIA is not able or willing to pursue. “We are in a position to contribute to defense priorities that frankly CIA is not,” the senior Defense Department official said.

The project was triggered by a classified study by the director of national intelligence last year that concluded that key Pentagon intelligence priorities were falling into gaps created by the DIA’s heavy focus on battlefield issues and CIA’s extensive workload. U.S. officials said the DIA needed to be repositioned as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan give way to what many expect will be a period of sporadic conflicts and simmering threats requiring close-in intelligence work.

“It’s the nature of the world we’re in,” said the senior defense official, who is involved in overseeing the changes at the DIA. “We just see a long-term era of change before things settle.”

The CIA is increasingly overstretched. Obama administration officials have said they expect the agency’s drone campaign against al-Qaeda to continue for at least a decade more, even as the agency faces pressure to stay abreast of issues including turmoil across the Middle East. Meanwhile, the CIA hasn’t met ambitious goals set by former president George W. Bush to expand its own clandestine service.

CIA officials including John D. Bennett, director of the National Clandestine Service, have backed the DIA’s plan. It “amplifies the ability of both CIA and DIA to achieve the best results,” said CIA spokesman Preston Golson.

Defense officials stressed that the DIA has not been given any new authorities or permission to expand its total payroll. Instead, the new spy slots will be created by cutting or converting other positions across the DIA workforce, which has doubled in the past decade — largely through absorption of other military intelligence entities — to about 16,500.

Vickers has given the DIA an infusion of about $100 million to kick-start the program, officials said, but the agency’s total budget is expected to remain stagnant or decline amid mounting financial pressures across the government.

The DIA’s overseas presence already includes hundreds of diplomatic posts — mainly defense attachés, who represent the military at U.S. embassies and openly gather information from foreign counterparts. Their roles won’t change, officials said. The attachés are part of the 1,600 target for the DIA, but such “overt” positions will represent a declining share amid the increase in undercover slots, officials said.

The senior Defense official said the DIA has begun filling the first of the new posts.

For decades, the DIA has employed undercover operatives to gather secrets on foreign militaries and other targets. But the Defense Humint Service, as it was previously known, was often regarded as an inferior sibling to its civilian counterpart.

Previous efforts by the Pentagon to expand its intelligence role — particularly during Donald H. Rumsfeld’s time as defense secretary — led to intense turf skirmishes with the CIA.

Those frictions have been reduced, officials said, largely because the CIA sees advantages to the new arrangement, including assurances that its station chiefs overseas will be kept apprised of DIA missions and have authority to reject any that might conflict with CIA efforts. The CIA will also be able to turn over hundreds of Pentagon-driven assignments to newly arrived DIA operatives.

“The CIA doesn’t want to be looking for surface-to-air missiles in Libya” when it’s also under pressure to assess the opposition in Syria, said a former high-ranking U.S. military intelligence officer who worked closely with both spy services. Even in cases where their assignments overlap, the DIA is likely to be more focused than the CIA on military aspects — what U.S. commanders in Africa might ask about al-Qaeda in Mali, for example, rather than the broader questions raised by the White House.

U.S. officials said DIA operatives, because of their military backgrounds, are often better equipped to recruit sources who can answer narrow military questions such as specifications of China’s fifth-generation fighter aircraft and its work on a nuclear aircraft carrier. “The CIA would like to give up that kind of work,” the former officer said.

The CIA has agreed to add new slots to its training classes at its facility in southern Virginia, known as the Farm, to make room for more military spies. The DIA has accounted for about 20 percent of each class in recent years, but that figure will grow.

The two agencies have also agreed to share resources overseas, including technical gear, logistics support, space in facilities and vehicles. The DIA has even adopted aspects of the CIA’s internal structure, creating a group called “Persia House,” for example, to pool resources on Iran.

The CIA’s influence extends across the DIA’s ranks. Flynn, who became director in July, is a three-star Army general who worked closely with the CIA in Afghanistan and Iraq. His deputy, David R. Shedd, spent the bulk of his career at the CIA, much of it overseas as a spy.

…

By Greg Miller,December 01, 2012

Find this story at 1 December 2012

© 2012 The Washington Post

More than 1,600 new Defense Department agents will collect intelligence and report findings to CIA, said to be overstretched

The news is likely to heighten concerns about the accountability of the US military amid concerns about the CIA’s drone programme. Photograph: US navy/Reuters

The US military plans to send hundreds more spies overseas as part of an ambitious plan that will more than double the size of its espionage network, it was reported Sunday.

The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the Pentagon’s military intelligence unit, is aiming to recruit 1,600 intelligence “collectors” – up from the several hundred overseas agents it has employed in recent years, sources told The Washington Post.

Combined with the enormous growth in the CIA since 9/11 attacks, the recruitment drive will create an unprecedented spy network. “The stars have been aligning on this for a while,” an anonymous former senior US military official involved in planning the DIA transformation told the Post.

The news is likely to heighten concerns about the accountability of the US military’s clandestine programmes amid mounting concerns about the CIA-controlled drone programme.

The United Nations said last month that it intends to investigate civilian deaths from drone strikes. The US has refused to even acknowledge the existence of a drone programme in Pakistan. The US military is not subject to the same congressional notification requirements as the CIA, creating yet more potential controversies.

With the US pulling out of Afghanistan and operations in Iraq winding down, government officials are looking to change the focus of the DIA away from battlefield intelligence and to concentrate on gathering intelligence on issues including Islamist militant groups in Africa, weapons trades in North Korea and Iran, and the military build up in China.

“It’s the nature of the world we’re in,” said the senior defense official, who is involved in overseeing the changes at the DIA. “We just see a long-term era of change before things settle.”

The DIA’s new recruits would include military attachés and others who do not work undercover. But US officials told the Post that the growth will be driven a new generation of spies who will take their orders from the Department of Defense.

The DIA is increasingly recruiting civilians to fill out its ranks as it looks to place agents as academics and business executives in militarily sensitive positions overseas.

Officials said the sheer number of agents that the DIA is looking to recruit presents its own challenge as the agency may struggle to find enough overseas vacancies for its clandestine agents. “There are some definite challenges from a cover perspective,” a senior defense official said.

…

Dominic Rushe in New York
The Guardian, Sunday 2 December 2012 17.03 GMT

Find this story at 2 December 2012
© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Suspect walked out of Swiss intelligence service NDB with stolen data after becoming ‘disgruntled’ with his job
MI6 and CIA both warned secret information could have been compromised
Switzerland’s NDB security procedures now under scrutiny

MI6 intelligence on counter- terrorism operations may have been stolen by a rogue Swiss official, it emerged last night.

Security chiefs in the UK have been warned that hugely sensitive information they provided to the NDB, Switzerland’s spy agency, could have been ‘compromised’.

Hundreds of thousands of pages of classified documents were copied by a senior IT technician for the NDB, which he then copied for himself on to portable storage devices carrying them away in a backpack.

Warned: The Secret Intelligence Service, based in London (pictured), was warned top secret information may have been compromised by the data theft

Swiss officials believe the suspect intended to sell the stolen data and have alerted both MI6 and America’s CIA.

The information was shared between Britain, Switzerland and the United States and the CIA has also been warned about the risk.

The technician, whose name has not been made public, was arrested by Swiss authorities last summer.

He was later released from prison while a criminal investigation by the office of Switzerland’s Federal Attorney General continues.

A European security source said it is believed the IT worker became disgruntled when he felt his advice on operating the data systems was not being taken seriously.

The technician downloaded hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of printed pages of classified material from the Swiss intelligence service’s servers onto portable hard drives.

He then carried them out of government buildings in a backpack.

Investigators now believe warning signs were missed in the months leading to his arrest.

The source said that the suspect became so disgruntled earlier this year that he stopped showing up for work.

Share: MI6, headed by Sir John Sawers, pictured, regularly shares information with the CIA and Swiss intelligence service

He worked for the NDB – or Federal Intelligence Service, which is part of Switzerland’s Defense Ministry – for about eight years.

He was described by one source as a ‘very talented’ technician.

The worker also had ‘administrator rights’, which gave him unrestricted access to most or all of the NDB’s networks, including those holding vast caches of secret data.

Swiss investigators seized portable storage devices containing the stolen data after they arrested the suspect.

The information was impounded before he had an opportunity to sell it.

However, Swiss investigators could not be positive he did not manage to pass any of the information on before his arrest.

Representatives of U.S. and British intelligence agencies had no immediate response to detailed queries about the case submitted by news agency Reuters.

Swiss Attorney General Michael Lauber and a senior prosecutor, Carolo Bulletti, announced in September they were investigating the data theft and its alleged perpetrator.

A spokeswoman for the attorney general said she was prohibited by law from disclosing the suspect’s identity.

A spokesman for the NDB said he could not comment on the investigation.

Security procedures and structures at the NDB, which was set up relatively recently, have now come under increased scrutiny.

It conducts both foreign and domestic intelligence activities for the Swiss government.

Danger: The CIA, based in Virginia (pictured), was warned secret information may have been compromised

Human resources staff are currently linked within the organisation to the agency’s information technology division.

This potentially made it difficult or confusing for the subdivision’s personnel to investigate themselves, the source said.

Despite warning signs, Swiss news reports say the NDB did not realise something was amiss until the largest Swiss bank, UBS, expressed concern to authorities about a potentially suspicious attempt to set up a new numbered bank account, which then was traced to the NDB technician.

…

By Becky Evans and James Slack

PUBLISHED: 17:23 GMT, 4 December 2012 | UPDATED: 09:01 GMT, 5 December 2012

Find this story at 4 December 2012

Published by Associated Newspapers Ltd

Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group
© Associated Newspapers Ltd